Camel Pro Tour...perhaps the best PRO tour to date??

Need to be careful here. The Camel Tour was, for practical purposes, actually the PBT, and was only known as the Camel tour in its last few years, which I believe were 1997-99.

Don Mackey's PBT in 1996 had 16 different events each having 100,000 added, and that was, perhaps the best year in recent memory to compete.

So, for me, the answer is that the best tour in recent memory, despite its ultimately precipitous fall, was the PBT.

1on1pooltournys said:

Was watching some old tournament matches last night from the old Camel Pro Events, and it brought back some nice memories of when I was in my youth admiring pool and it's PRO players.

Is it fair to say that maybe the Camel Tour was the best PRO tour to date? Seems like for my generation it was (I'm 31).

They even had a "bonus" program similar to Golf and NASCAR where players accumulated points and got a nice check at the end of the season. I believe they contributed approximately 250k to this.

I was sad to see the tour disappear.

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Was this the tour that was on Fox? Were Merle Harmon and Kim Davenport the booth guys , and occasionally Mataya or Varner ?If it was Kim and Merle talked about golf every event. What a way to promote pool.I did enjoy watching the pool though.

4 of these tournaments in a row paid NO PRIZE MONEY

sjm said:

Need to be careful here. The Camel Tour was, for practical purposes, actually the PBT, and was only known as the Camel tour in its last few years, which I believe were 1997-99.

Don Mackey's PBT in 1996 had 16 different events each having 100,000 added, and that was, perhaps the best year in recent memory to compete.

So, for me, the answer is that the best tour in recent memory, despite its ultimately precipitous fall, was the PBT.

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4 of these tournaments in a row paid NO PRIZE MONEY....ask Jose Parica sometime how he liked it, winning tournaments and not getting paid at all.

I still have the articles from the the Lawsuits where Mackey sued Camel (RJ Reynolds) for not helping him pay the players....the settlement amount was around $700,000, and I don't know who split that up.

There was a lot of total money in pool in 1996, ESPN was putting the World Open on, and then Earl Stickland ran the 11 racks ....CLICK TO SEE MORE

The IPT paid more money out to players then any other billiard pro tour or am I wrong?

cjssecrets4u2 said:

4 of these tournaments in a row paid NO PRIZE MONEY....ask Jose Parica sometime how he liked it, winning tournaments and not getting paid at all.

I still have the articles from the the Lawsuits where Mackey sued Camel (RJ Reynolds) for not helping him pay the players....the settlement amount was around $700,000, and I don't know who split that up.

There was a lot of total money in pool in 1996, ESPN was putting the World Open on, and then Earl Stickland ran the 11 racks ....CLICK TO SEE MORE

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I suspect that they went 50:50 = Mr Mackey 50% Mrs Mackey 50%

That's Right! To this day the IPT has been the closest thing to the Big Time

Fast Lenny said:

The IPT paid more money out to players then any other billiard pro tour or am I wrong?

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That's Right! To this day the IPT has been the closest thing to a Big Time Tour in Pocket Billiards. It also proved, and is backed up by our latest research here in Dallas that "the money doesn't matter"....people won't watch pool even if the purses were a million dollars a tournament.

There's other factors that are MUCH more important to do first, then the money will naturally evolve into the Game. There's always been the pattern of "putting the cart before the horse" in the promotion of pool. Developing an emotional attachment to the viewers will always be the primary purpose in sports promotion. It's been proven over and over in other sports and games. imho

Bob Jewett said:

That may be true in the US, but elsewhere cue sports are on TV a lot. Mike Shamos reports two (2!!) 24-hour snooker channels in Hong Kong. The Chinese snooker champ is said to have 10,000,000 fans and a big snooker tournament may have over 100,000,000 viewers. In Europe you may find pool, snooker or 3-cushion on the tube several times per week. But in Europe they seem to put sports on sports channels rather than Talk Jocks.

Maybe it's the US culture or maybe it's the way it's presented here. It's too bad the Mosconi Cup has never been shown live (or near-live) here.

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We always got a solid 1 rating, which is a million viewers.....I was talking about new viewers that don't play pool....I didn't clarify, my bad

I'm not sure what ratings the pool shows do now....does anyone know what the Ladies US OPEN did as far as ratings?

1on1pooltournys said:

Was watching some old tournament matches last night from the old Camel Pro Events, and it brought back some nice memories of when I was in my youth admiring pool and it's PRO players.

Is it fair to say that maybe the Camel Tour was the best PRO tour to date? Seems like for my generation it was (I'm 31).

They even had a "bonus" program similar to Golf and NASCAR where players accumulated points and got a nice check at the end of the season. I believe they contributed approximately 250k to this.

I was sad to see the tour disappear.

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They were good, some were even televised nationally.
I played in a couple of them and they were ran smooth and they put on a good show. Problem was, no one showed up. One tournament they did that was televised, they asked any of us in the room to gather at two sides of the final table up close and they used camera angles to make it look like the place was packed.

Lets face it, pool just is not a good spectator sport any more the skateboarding, shooting or archery. They all have one thing in common, a small subcultural following and no real interest by the public in general. At least not as spectator sports. There are many things people enjoy doing but will not pay to watch. Big sponsors just have to much evidence to bare this out and will never put any money into the pool. There are just too many other things that are far more lucrative and they are bottom line guys, period.

Where's theses videos located

Bingo!!!

CJ Wiley said:

That's Right! To this day the IPT has been the closest thing to a Big Time Tour in Pocket Billiards. It also proved, and is backed up by our latest research here in Dallas that "the money doesn't matter"....people won't watch pool even if the purses were a million dollars a tournament.

There's other factors that are MUCH more important to do first, then the money will naturally evolve into the Game. There's always been the pattern of "putting the cart before the horse" in the promotion of pool. Developing an emotional attachment to the viewers will always be the primary purpose in sports promotion. It's been proven over and over in other sports and games. imho

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The purses don't matter. It will never be watchable on TV until there is interest developed in it.

You do that through marketing and promotion. You have to do what EVERY OTHER sport has done, make it successful by putting butts in seats first and then you'll have to beat the networks off with a stick.

Bonus ball had one part right. The team aspect. I had envisioned using that idea in a format similar to mosconi cup with tenball.

I had talked about it a bit with Mark Griffin several years ago.

The game doesn't necessarily matter. The general public doesn't know much other than eightball and they typically call eight ball just "pool".

However, you have to actually put on the matches in the towns that the teams are from. You have to use local print and radio advertising and you have to target potential audiences that would have interest first like the leagues.

All this talk about no one wanting to watch pool even leagues. They have no reason to. Most of the time, they don't even know that events are being held.

Having teams from your city generates interest, but no one that is visiting vegas is gonna give a shit that a team from their city is playing a team from another city in Vegas.

They went to Vegas to get away from home, they don't want to be reminded of home.

Jaden

Scott Lee said:

For example, you have 8000 poolplayers less than 50 yards away from a pro event being played in the same building, in Vegas...and it's hard to attract even a couple hundred fans. Same thing at the SBE. It's not a lack of available people...there are other reasons the fans don't support the events.

Scott Lee

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Scott,

I agree 100%. You could have the Top 10 pool players in the world playing and 90% of the people would walk right past the place, but add some "WWF" antics and personalities to the players and you couldn't keep them out.

CJ Wiley said:

That's Right! To this day the IPT has been the closest thing to a Big Time Tour in Pocket Billiards. It also proved, and is backed up by our latest research here in Dallas that "the money doesn't matter"....people won't watch pool even if the purses were a million dollars a tournament.

There's other factors that are MUCH more important to do first, then the money will naturally evolve into the Game. There's always been the pattern of "putting the cart before the horse" in the promotion of pool. Developing an emotional attachment to the viewers will always be the primary purpose in sports promotion. It's been proven over and over in other sports and games. imho

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You are absolutely right. The munchkins are out there watching the Kardashians. They don't market pool very well.

do away (once and for all) with all this "one foul" silliness.

The most important factor is how much the rules have diluted the game of pool....no wonder no one wants to watch, I certainly don't.

Imagine how many people would want to watch football if the main source of strategy was eliminated......like making it illegal to touch the quarterback or illegal to defend against passes......this would ruin the game of football much like the true essence of pool has been destroyed.

There is a version of pool that could be vastly popular, but it's not "one foul," that's proven to be true though the last 15 years. Let's bring back the best qualities of the game and do away (once and for all) with all this "one foul" silliness.

'The Game is Waiting'

overlord said:

You are absolutely right. The munchkins are out there watching the Kardashians. They don't market pool very well.

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Creating Fans should be the number one goal of pro pool promoters. Emotional attachment to the players is a big part of this but another part is the atmosphere of pool events and it needs to be upgraded simultaneously imo if we want fans.

One of the first thing that needs to be done here in the U.S. is to make the events fun to go to. NO ONE WANTS TO GO TO AN EVENT WHERE THEY HAVE TO BE QUIET. If I was a promoter I would work hard at creating an exciting atmosphere. Mosconi cup certainly comes to mind. That is an event that would be fun to attend for anyone. This may involve getting away from the tournament format.

If we have to stick to a tournament format then I like the idea of a main table that the atmosphere would center around and one other idea that I would incorporate is a solid M.C. Music sets the mood. Pool needs music to keep the excitement flowing between games, during the racking. I know that I'm going to lose a lot of you with the genre of music but I believe that pool needs some beats. Forget about the classic rock, etc. Nothing sets the mood like a beat. You can play something like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQofcJ6L2Rk&list=PLDC60C815BE117301 (not to soft and not too hard) between games to keep the mood lively. The volume not too loud so that the crowd can still cheer and have fun but something in the background at the right times would go a long way.

Earl

Didn't Earl walk out on Corey during the finals match because of the way Corey was breaking. The match was to be delay televised on national TV. From what I understand that was the beginning of the end for the Camel Pro Tour. So Earl helped to end that tour and Buddy ended the Casino backing with his infamous dump. The players have no one to blame but their short sighted selves!

Wedge

Plain and Simple:
Pool is never going to be mainstream, I don't give a shiit what you do or who is behind it.

There are way to many bad eggs in the game to start with. And that includes a lot of top players.

Tournaments could pay 1 million each to the winner, and no one in the real world would give 2 shits.

Here's what Earl had to say about the CAMEL TOUR, PCA and physics of the game.

The "beginning of the end" came when the Camel Tour didn't pay their players 4-5 tournaments in a row.

Ask Jose Parica, he was the biggest winner, and is still owed over 50k (from what he told me in Houston). Earl had nothing to do with the Camel Tour's demise, it actually led to a law suit that generated over $700,000 for someone.....I'm pretty sure the players didn't get much of this money from RJ Reynolds (Camel) - Don Mackey was intricately involved with this and it's hard to tell what actually happened.

This is the reason we started the PCA Tour, however, it too was dealt a fatal blow when Earl Strickland won the Million Dollar Challenge Contest (10 racks for a million).

Here's what Earl had to say about the CAMEL TOUR, PCA and physics of the game.

Wedge said:

Didn't Earl walk out on Corey during the finals match because of the way Corey was breaking. The match was to be delay televised on national TV. From what I understand that was the beginning of the end for the Camel Pro Tour. So Earl helped to end that tour and Buddy ended the Casino backing with his infamous dump. The players have no one to blame but their short sighted selves!

Wedge

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